Transcript

A Texas oil tycoon is trying to get America off of foreign oil. T. Boone Pickens has spent the last year and nearly 60-million dollars promoting his plan to use only US sources of energy. Rebecca Williams reports:

T. Boone Pickens says he’s all for domestic oil drilling, solar, nuclear, coal – especially wind and natural gas. But anything, as long as it comes from the USA.

“I’m for anything that’s American. Anything that’s American. (applause) But we have to get off oil from the enemy.”

And he said he used to be an outspoken critic of ethanol. But not anymore.

“It is American. Is it a good fuel? It’s an ugly baby is what it is. But it’s our ugly baby.” (laughter)

He says Members of Congress tell him, whether it’s a good fuel or not, farm states want it.

He readily admits his plan would help him make some money. But he says he also wants the U.S. to get away from foreign imports for the sake of national security and the health of the economy.

Related Links

Badin Mayor Jim Harrison stands on the steps of town hall. Alcoa’s old smelter looms behind. Alcoa once employed half the population of Badin, but the smelter closed in 2002. (Photo by Julie Rose)

Mark Gross and Gene Ellis on a bridge over the Yadkin River at the Narrows Dam. Gross is technical manager for the dam. Ellis is Licensing and Operating Manager for Alcoa Power Generating Inc. (Photo by Julie Rose)

The Narrows Dam holds back the Yadkin River to create Badin Lake. It is the largest of Alcoa’s four hydropower dams on the river. (Photo by Julie Rose)

In the dry American West, folks have been
duking it out over water for centuries.
But water shortages are new to the Southeast.
Many once thought the rivers would flow
forever. Now, North Carolina is emerging
from the worst drought in over a hundred
years. Julie Rose reports on a power
struggle has erupted over one of its
rivers:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/feature_rose_052509.mp3

Transcript

In the dry American West, folks have been
duking it out over water for centuries.
But water shortages are new to the Southeast.
Many once thought the rivers would flow
forever. Now, North Carolina is emerging
from the worst drought in over a hundred
years. Julie Rose reports on a power
struggle has erupted over one of its
rivers:

(sound of inside a truck)

From a one-lane road way above the Yadkin River, the trees are so thick you can just see
the water. It looks so tranquil that the Narrows Dam is a bit of a shock when you turn the
bend.

Rose: “Whoa, this thing’s huge.”
Ellis: “Yeah.” (chuckles)

(sound of climbing out of the truck)

I’m with Gene Ellis, who’s the head of Alcoa Power Generating.

(sound of water falling.)

For nearly 100 years, the aluminum company has owned and operated four dams on one
of North Carolina’s largest rivers. Now Alcoa is trying to renew that hydropower license
for 50 more years. But the Governor of North Carolina wants Alcoa’s dams for herself –
or rather for the people of North Carolina.

The federal law that governs America’s rivers does allow for a takeover, but it’s never
been done. And Alcoa’s Gene Ellis says it’s something he’d expect of a dictator.

“Alcoa’s only experience with the socialization or the nationalization of a plant was
in Venezuela during the leadership of Hugo Chavez.”

Ellis says the takeover attempt violates Alcoa’s property rights. Trouble is that while
Alcoa owns the dams, the people of North Carolina own the river. Alcoa’s basically a
tenant.

And North Carolina Governor Bev Perdue says it’s time to end the lease.

“We need to be sure that the water sources that we are allowing to be controlled – if
you will – by a private industry, produces something for North Carolina.”

Something like jobs, says Perdue, which is why Alcoa built the dams in the first place.
They used to power an aluminum smelter that was the main employer in the region.

In 2002, Alcoa closed the smelter, but still makes millions off the dams. It sells the
hydropower wholesale. Alcoa continues to pay taxes – and still offers free swimming
and fishing on the lakes – but the Governor says that’s not enough to deserve 50 more
years of control on the river.

Officials from at least seven counties agree. As do many residents, like Roger Dick.

“The state needs to be in control. We do not need to be, as citizens, having to go ask
a global company for how we will use our water.”

Ironically, Alcoa’s biggest support comes from towns on the four lakes it manages.
Especially Badin – where you can see the huge, empty smelter from the steps of the
mayor’s office.

Rose: “Did you work there?”

Harrison “Yes. 30 some years. That was our only industry and we’ve lost our heart
when we lost Alcoa.”

And yet, Badin Mayor Jim Harrison says-

“I would rather trust who I know than who I don’t know. Does the state not run our
highways? Do you really think they have done the best with our highways that can
be done? So, I’m mean, if they do the same job with our dams, what’s that gonna
end up being?”

Not even Governor Perdue can answer that yet. Nor is it clear how the transfer would
work or what the state might have to pay for it. Those decisions are up to the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees thousands of hydropower licenses, but
has yet to take one over.

Talking to Mark Robinson – the commission’s director of energy projects – you can
practically hear him scratching his head through the phone line.

“We really can’t figure out what the idea was there. But I’m sure with the help of a
number of very smart lawyers we would all figure it out.”

Since Alcoa expected a decision on its license this summer, lawyers on both sides are
already working overtime.

People across the country are watching closely, because the outcome will set an
important precedent at a time when water is no longer the endless resource many once
thought.

Transcript

Each year, ships intentionally dump millions of gallons of oil into the oceans. Rebecca Williams reports everything from cruise ships to cargo ships to oil tankers have been caught:

Ships have all kinds of mechanical parts that use oil.

The ships are supposed to collect the waste oil and separate it out, but it turns out a lot of ships just dump it overboard.

Stacey Mitchell is chief of the environmental crimes section at the Department of Justice. She says some estimates are all this oil adds up to about 88 million gallons a year.

That’s eight times the amount of oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez. And those are just the ships they catch.

“As we do more and more of these enforcements the crews on board these vessels who are trying to defeat our purposes are getting craftier and are coming up with new ways to commit this crime and new ways to conceal it.”

Mitchell says it takes time and costs money to separate the oil the way you’re supposed to, and so they might think the chance of getting caught might be worth the risk. Though if you are caught, the fines can be in the millions of dollars.

Transcript

A report in this week’s journal Nature looks at how thawing ground up North might
impact global warming. Amy Mayer spent some time in Interior Alaska with
scientists at Eight Mile Lake:

Permafrost is ground that’s supposed to be frozen all the time. But for decades it’s been
thawing in places.

When that happens, carbon gets released—potentially contributing to the greenhouse
effect.

Ted Schuur’s a biologist at the University of Florida but he spends his summers doing
experiments near Healy, Alaska.

I tagged along during some field visits.

I met Schuur when we were both living in Fairbanks. He lives far away now, but loves
Alaska. You only work here year after year if you do. Summer field work is brutal – tons
of mosquitoes and you work all the time because the sun doesn’t set.

Pretty soon, we’re there.

“This has to be one of my more photogenic field sites that I ever worked at.”

Tundra surrounds us. We’re just north of the Alaska Range. I can see the snow-capped
peaks. We change into rubber boots, pick up our packs, and, after a few steps, we’re on
the tussocks.

Alaskans often say walking on tussocks is like balancing on basketballs. It’s not easy. If
your feet slip off, they get wet. Schuur’s tall and used to this, so he goes faster than me,
and with less bumbling.

Soon, we’re balancing on lumber instead. Schuur and his group try to protect the areas
where they work with narrow boardwalks.

“When we first came out here, we put these boardwalks that we’re walking on now, big
10 feet pieces of lumber – they’re like 2x6s or 2x8s. But we don’t really want to walk on
the tundra because we come here a lot and you’d end up with a trail in no time and
destroy vegetation.”

Schuur knows trudging across the tundra damages it and he tries to minimize that harm.
But in order to answer his questions about the potential greenhouse effect from thawing
permafrost, he has to dig in.

Schuur saws into the tundra with a bread knife.

“It’s very satisfying. It’s like cutting a big cake – though this is a cake with lots of roots in it.”

He cuts up the plants and packs the roots and the tops into jars.

“We’re going to measure respiration of plants.”

Schuur uses a machine to scrub out the carbon from the air that’s in the jars. The plant
tops and roots will continue to respire carbon dioxide until they die. Later, he’ll use fancy
equipment to “date” the carbon that’s left.

He needs the age of the carbon because when he finds older carbon he knows it’s only
recently escaped the frozen ground. That makes it extra in the system.

At first, Schuur learned, new carbon coincides with more plant growth that uses up the
addition. That means no greenhouse effect.

But, later, the permafrost keeps thawing, more old carbon becomes available, and plant
growth just can’t keep up. That means, carbon dioxide ends up in the atmosphere from
the thawing permafrost – just like it does from burning coal or gasoline.

The thawing may ultimately be a bad thing, but to understand and explain it further,
Schuur wants to document it – or even cause some. Next, he says…

“As strange as it seems, I would love to thaw permafrost on a large scale,
experimentally.”

The dilemma, of course, is that causing a thaw means contributing to – in a small way –
a process that might damage or destroy the ecosystem. But we all emit carbon dioxide,
just by driving.

“Even as I do that and I do an experiment where I melt out a little bit of the permafrost, I
think we’re generating this information that’s helping society answer these huge
questions.”

Schuur says the amount of tundra he’d sacrifice is tiny relative to the whole circumpolar
region, where tons of carbon waits in ground that is frozen now but could eventually
thaw.

Transcript

President Barack Obama’s visit
to Nellis Air Force Base near
Las Vegas has more to do with
what’s on the ground than it
does the fighter jets in the air.
Lester Graham reports on the base’s
solar energy project:

Nellis Air Force Base is home to the nation’s largest solar photovoltaic power plant. The system generates enough electricity to power the equivelent of more than 13,000 homes.

The Air Force’s partner in the solar plant is MMA Renewable Ventures. Matt Cheney is CEO.

Cheney says there are lots of advantages, starting with no need for foreign or domestic fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

“It gets its energy from the sun. And, by the way, the sun is pretty predictable and effectively the energy we get from it is free.”

That’s not to say solar energy is free. The array at Nellis Air Force Base cost 100-million dollars to build.

The Air Force saves about a million dollars a year. So, it’s going to take a while to break even.

But as the demand for more solar goes up, the technology gets cheaper, in just a few years you might be able to get solar energy for about the same price as from coal-burning power plants.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

JP Anderson, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Park Ranger, at
the start of National Geographic and the National Park Service's 2009
BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo by Enrique Pulido)

BioBlitz volunteers turned up two species of fungi that hadn't been
officially identified in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo courtesy of The Field Museum of Chicago)

The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/feature_allee_052509.mp3

Transcript

The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:

The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is spread along Lake Michigan’s southern shoreline.

During this BioBlitz, scientists and volunteers fan out in teams to search the sand dunes, woods, and
grassland around here.

At first, the mood’s high, but then it rains kinda hard.

We’re supposed to be counting species for 24 hours, but at first, we can’t even get out of our cars.

(ring of a phone)

“Hello? Yeah. We’re stuck in traffic, here. We came out here and I thought we were going
out in the wrong direction.”

I hitch a ride with Dr. Patrick Leacock. He’s a mycologist, a kind of mushroom expert.

I’m actually lucky to be on his BioBlitz team, because organizers from National Geographic and the National Park Service want people to count all the species
in the park.

And they mean everything – not just plants and animals that are a cinch to find.

Allee: “Are fungi something you feel that the average person doesn’t think about when it comes
to biodiversity?”

Leacock: “Yeah, there’s people, you tell them you study mushrooms, and they talk about their
athlete’s foot, or they think there’s only six different kinds or something like
that.”

Leacock says, in fact, the Indiana Dunes Lakeshore has at least 600 fungi species. He hopes the
BioBlitz team will add to that list.

Leacock: “Here we are.”

Allee: “I’m hunting mushrooms with three trained mycologists and there are six other volunteers on my team here. One of them is Zachary Benes – he’s just 9 years old. But, I gotta say, Dr. Leacock is pretty lucky
to have Zachary on the team – since he’s found the most mushrooms of anyone on the team.”

Benes: “Is it poisonous?”

Leacock: “Nope. A real mushroom.”

Tang: “Yeah.”

Allee: “Looks like you found another one, too. Where’d you find it?”

Benes: “Over there by the wood.”

Leacock: “This is collybia sub-sulphurea. Do you know what sulfur means?”

Benes: “No.”

Leacock: “It’s a kind of a yellow-orange color. So, this might be a new record for the dunes. So that’s a good one. Was it
just the one?”

Benes: “Yeah. Just the one.”

Leacock: “It’s in good shape.”

Along the trail, I chat with Yaya Tang. She’s one of the other mycologists on the team.

Tang says she’s glad to see BioBlitz volunteers search for elusive species of bats, bugs, and fungi.

“I feel like that’s an issue with biodiversity in general. Where people care about things that are cute or
that they see immediately. Like, there’s insects, too, that don’t get a lot of attention.”

Allee: “Dr. Leacock, we’re pretty much finished here. You got this container of many varieties
of fungi we’ve collected within an hour, would you have been able to get this many
yourself? If you had come out here on your own?”

Leacock: “No. The more people you have searching, that helps a lot. Different people will see
different things, too, I think. So we’ve 14 or 15 things right in my box. We have two that might be new
records for the dunes.”

The BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore lasts another 20 hours.

A few days later, Dr. Leacock writes me.

He tells me volunteers turned up at least one fungi specimen no one had ever seen in the Dunes park.

It’s a small success – enough that National Geographic, the Park Service, and other groups are
planning more BioBlitzes across the country.

Transcript

This week, one state is voting on a bill that would make it illegal for restaurants to serve takeout food in styrofoam. Rebecca Williams has more:

A number of cities have banned Styrofoam food containers – including San Francisco, Seattle and Portland. And now California lawmakers are deciding whether to ban the containers.

The bill says styrofoam is a big litter problem. And animals can choke on pieces of it.

The World Health Organization’s cancer research agency says styrene is a possible human carcinogen. Styrene is the stuff styrofoam’s made out of.

Jerry Hill is the Assembly member who introduced the bill in California. He says the American Chemistry Council and other groups are making it hard for him to get the votes he needs.

“You would think the world was going to come to an end if we were to prohibit and ban Styrofoam. It’s an industry that whether you look at the chemical industry, the restaurant industry that’s opposing it, and they are very vocal and very powerful.”

The opponents say there’s no reason for the ban, and they say it would be bad for the economy.

Related Links

Another scare came a few years ago, when spinach was found to be tainted with E. Coli (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

In the wake of this year’s tainted peanut butter scare, Congress is getting ready to approve changes to the Food and Drug Administration. Lawmakers want to give the American public more confidence in the safety of the food supply system. But some people doubt they will be able to
make real change. Julie Grant reports:
http://environmentreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/feature_grant_052509.mp3

Transcript

In the wake of this year’s tainted peanut butter scare,
Congress is getting ready to approve changes to the Food
and Drug Administration. Lawmakers want to give the
American public more confidence in the safety of the food
supply system. But some people doubt they will be able to
make real change. Julie Grant reports:

Gwen Rosenberg is a mom. She has four boys to feed. So
she’d like to be able to trust that the food supply is safe.

But when Rosenberg heard that 8 people died after eating
peanut products earlier this year, and hundreds more got
sick, it confirmed her beliefs: that the Food and Drug
Administration isn’t making sure food is safe.

“There shouldn’t be stories that come out that reveal that the
peanut plant hasn’t been inspected for years. Or when it
was inspected, there was rat feces. They’re not doing their
job.”

Rosenberg wants the FDA to crack down on food
manufacturers. She says they need inspect more – and shut
down facilities when they find dangerous conditions. She
was appalled when she realized the FDA has no authority to
recall tainted foods.

“The fact that they don’t have recall authority essentially
neuters the FDA. I mean, how are we supposed to take
anything they say or do seriously if they end result is, ‘well,
we can’t force you to do this?’ Well, thanks for the
community service message not to eat the tainted peanut
butter, but you’re not actually making me any safer.”

In the case of the Peanut Corporation of America, a test
found salmonella in its products. It retested. When the test
came out negative, it went ahead and shipped out the
products.

And the FDA had no recall authority. Congressman Bart
Stupak says that’s just wrong. He’s co-sponsoring a food
safety bill that would give the FDA some authority in cases
like this.

“What the FDA can do, shut ‘er down. Prove to me that you
cleaned it up. Prove to me, where did you destroy this
product. Give me the facts. They can’t give you the facts,
shut ‘er down right now. Let’s not wait ten days.”

But leaders in the FDA don’t think recall authority would
have made much difference in the tainted peanut product
case.

David Acheson is Associate Commissioner for foods at the
FDA. Once people started getting sick, he says most
companies using the Peanut Corporation of America’s
products voluntarily recalled their cookies and crackers.

“There’s no suggestion that having mandatory recall is a
panacea to solving food safety problems. It’s one more tool
that would be used from time to time when the situation
warrants it, but it’s not the answer to modernizing food
safety.”

Acheson says the real problem is that the FDA is so busy
reacting to public health threats – to putting out fires – that it
can’t get ahead of the problems and fix the food safety
system.

He says the food system needs preventive controls.

There are a lot of points in the food supply chain where
hazards can creep in: when the food is being grown,
processed, distributed, or sold in a store. Acheson says the
food industry needs to identify control points for each food –
where they are most at risk at becoming unsafe.

“Is it a wild animal in a field, is it the water supply for the
spinach, is it the temperature in my freezer in a retail store.
And all these things in between where things can go wrong
and food can either become contaminated or if there is a low
level of contamination then bacteria can grow.”

Once those control points are identified, Acheson says the
FDA needs to do more inspections – to make sure food is
being handlled safely from farms fields to grocery stores.

But that’s going to cost money.

So Congress is considering charging companies fees to pay
for those inspections.

Food manufacturers don’t like that idea. We contacted
several companies, but none of them, not even the Grocery
Manufacturers Association, would comment for this story.

Transcript

Scientist think they’ve found
a rare whale in a place where
they thought they were wiped
out. Sadie Babits reports,
they haven’t seen the whale
but they’ve heard it:

Scientists thought the North Atlantic Right Whale
was gone. Only two of them have been spotted in
the last 50 years off the southern tip of Greenland.

But some underwater microphones picked up right
whale calls.

“They sound like mmmmmmick… kind of like that.”

That’s David Mellinger. He teaches at Oregon State
University.

He says they recorded more than two
thousand right whale calls in a year. That doesn’t
mean there are a lot of the whales, but Mellinger
says hearing any in the North Atlantic is significant.

“Because the population is so endangered. There
are only 300-350 maybe right whales in the world.
So finding any new whales is important.”

But there is a concern. As the Arctic Ice Cap
melts because of global warming, more ships are
expected to pass through the area. That could
mean ships could strike and kill the few right
whales that are left.

Transcript

During the past couple of centuries,
the typical graveyard hasn’t changed
much. Its central features still include
tombstones, winding paths, trees and
grass. Some critics want cemeteries to
ban tombstones, stop fertilizing, and
institute other green practices. Todd
Melby reports that traditional burial
practices die hard:

I’m in a mausoleum with Roman Szabelski. He’s the head of Catholic Cemeteries for the
Archdiocese of Chicago. He’s punching information into a computer.

Catholic grave locator: “Spell out the last name of the deceased that you are trying to
locate using the touch-screen keyboard …”

“So I’ve just keyed in my family name and I’m pushing search. Florence Szabelski is my
mother so I’m asking it to show that record to me.”

Szabelski started mowing grass at the cemeteries in 1979. Today, he presides over 2.2
million dead at 43 cemeteries. That makes Catholic Cemeteries one of the nation’s largest
graveyards.

Other than the high-tech grave locator, Szabelski says his customers prefer things the old
fashioned way.

“We come from a very conservative tradition where people want their 3 by 8, their grave,
to look like their backyard, which is perfectly manicured.”

Some people would like to change that. Advocates of something called green burial say
the perfectly manicured grass, the granite tombstones, the concrete burial vaults, the big
wooden or metal coffins, all of it, is wasteful.

Instead, they’d like to see graveyards filled with native grasses and flowers, rocks used as
grave markers, biodegradable coffins or no coffins at all.

So far, there’s not much demand for green burial.

Most people here are like Charlene and Margaret Villarreal, who are sitting near their
mother’s grave at Queen of Heaven Cemetery. Until her mother’s recent death, Margaret
Villareal had no reason to visit a cemetery.

“I’m 45 years old and nothing has brought me to the cemetery. Nothing, until she passed
away.”

The Villareals have decorated their mother’s grave with red roses, a crucifix festooned
with purple ribbons and a Chicago Cubs pennant.

On this day, they’ve come to honor their mother’s birthday.

Charlene Villarreal: “I’ve planned it since the day she died. I knew I would be here.”
(long pause)

Margaret Villarreal: “Oh get a grip. If she were here …”

Charlene Villarreal: “Sorry, Ma. It’s not as bad as it was on Mother’s Day. (Pause)
(Sniffles) I’m OK.”

They chose a traditional funeral for their mother. Her body was embalmed, which
allowed for an open casket. That casket was placed inside a concrete vault and buried. A
grave marker notes that she was a “loving wife and mother” who will always be in the
hearts of her family.

Margaret Villareal fears a green burial would have robbed her mother of the respect she
deserved.

“Here we are. We’re in the United States. That’s traditionally not how it’s done. You
might do that with animals. But as humans go there is more of a process of dignity
involved. You know, it sounds like that’s something you would do in a mass burial with
some kind of a tragedy like the Chicago fire but not something you’d do to remember
your loved one.”

Environmentalists dispute that. They say most people simply don’t know enough about
green burial to make an informed decision.

Whether that’s true or not, Roman Szabelski of Catholic Cemeteries is plowing ahead
with his plans. He’s got plenty of land on hand for tomorrow’s dead.

“We’re sitting in Queen of Heaven Cemetery right now, which is roughly about a 300-
acre site. About 100 of those acres are leased to the golf course next door. As we need the
property, the golf course will go from 18 to 9 to zero and a driving range and that
property will be used.”

When Szabelski adds up all the land Catholic Cemeteries owns, he figures it can keep
doing business as usual for the next 100 to 200 years.